Coronavirus

[Spud]

Until you can show the maths supporting your inane claims they will, rightly, be ignored.

We now have a wave of mortality happening, relatively lower numbers than in previous waves, but if it continues through next year, that will support the claim: just turn the computer screen sideways to see why.

[Udayana]

We now have a wave of mortality happening, relatively lower numbers than in previous waves, but if it continues through next year, that will support the claim: just turn the computer screen sideways to see why.

What? If there are more infections there will be more deaths - that doesn't support the idea that vaccination causes an increase in infections.
 

[Gordon]

Looks like Boris the Liar is between a rock and a hard place as regards implementing more restrictions in England - poor Boris, my heart bleeds for him (not).

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/25/now-tory-mps-warn-dont-toughen-covid-new-year-rules

[Gordon]

My reading of this is that Boris the Liar is more concerned about appeasing the lunatic fringe of his own party than he is about the welfare of the population of England. Time will tell.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/27/boris-johnson-will-impose-no-further-covid-restrictions-before-new-year

[jeremyp]

My reading of this is that Boris the Liar is more concerned about appeasing the lunatic fringe of his own party than he is about the welfare of the population of England. Time will tell.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/27/boris-johnson-will-impose-no-further-covid-restrictions-before-new-year

Of course he is. His own party can kick him out next week. The population of England doesn't get that opportunity for three years

[SteveH]

Extra measures in Scotland

In the pubs?

[Sebastian Toe]

In the pubs?

Traditionally yes.
1/5 or 1/4 gill and not the sparrow spit 1/6 served up in England!

[jeremyp]

Traditionally yes.
1/5 or 1/4 gill and not the sparrow spit 1/6 served up in England!

OK granddad, we serve spirits in metric nowadays.

[Spud]

What? If there are more infections there will be more deaths - that doesn't support the idea that vaccination causes an increase in infections.

I hope you don't mind if I have a go at this.

What? If there are more infections there will be more deaths - that doesn't support the idea that vaccination causes an increase in infections.

True, but what does support it is that we already know that the vaccines allow transmission. The natural adaptive immune response mounts after viral load and transmission peaks, so there is little opportunity for it to put selection pressure on the virus. Because vaccinal antibodies allow transmission, they will be likely to put selection pressure on the virus, and so will indirectly cause increased infection due to the increased spread of more highly infectious variants.

This is not to say that natural immunity doesn't apply selection pressure too: we know that the variants of concern were circulating before mass vaccination began. If a more infectious variant arises naturally within a mostly un-vaccinated population, its spread will be limited because their innate immunity, which can deal with a low viral load, along with a build-up in transmission-preventing, naturally acquired immunity, will eventually dilute the cases of infection with this variant enough to result in herd immunity. We see this currently happening in Bulgaria, for example.

In the UK Health Security Agency's vaccine surveillance report we are seeing lower case rates in unvaccinated people aged 18-69. I suggest that this cancels out/makes up for the higher death rates in the same groups.

Table 11 Shows the data for late November - early December.

[Maeght]

I hope you don't mind if I have a go at this.
True, but what does support it is that we already know that the vaccines allow transmission. The natural adaptive immune response mounts after viral load and transmission peaks, so there is little opportunity for it to put selection pressure on the virus. Because vaccinal antibodies allow transmission, they will be likely to put selection pressure on the virus, and so will indirectly cause increased infection due to the increased spread of more highly infectious variants.

This is not to say that natural immunity doesn't apply selection pressure too: we know that the variants of concern were circulating before mass vaccination began. If a more infectious variant arises naturally within a mostly un-vaccinated population, its spread will be limited because their innate immunity, which can deal with a low viral load, along with a build-up in transmission-preventing, naturally acquired immunity, will eventually dilute the cases of infection with this variant enough to result in herd immunity. We see this currently happening in Bulgaria, for example.

In the UK Health Security Agency's vaccine surveillance report we are seeing lower case rates in unvaccinated people aged 18-69. I suggest that this cancels out/makes up for the higher death rates in the same groups.

Table 11 Shows the data for late November - early December.

Not seen that anything to say that transmission is prevented by naturally acquired immunity. Do you have a link for that?

[Spud]

Not seen that anything to say that transmission is prevented by naturally acquired immunity. Do you have a link for that?

Naturally acquired immunity prevents re-infection, so that the third wave of infection has a definite end point (in contrast to the current ongoing third wave following mass vaccination), as all reservoirs for infection are then used up.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2110300

[Maeght]

Naturally acquired immunity prevents re-infection, so that the third wave of infection has a definite end point (in contrast to the current ongoing third wave following mass vaccination), as all reservoirs for infection are then used up.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2110300

You said transmission, not reinfection. You can catch Covid-19 more than once though so natural infection doesn't prevent re-infection.

Whether natural infection gives better protection than vaccines or the other way round seems to be unclear with various studies giving different results.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-do-vaccines-protect-better-than-infection-induced-immunity#The-need-for-further-research

[Spud]

You said transmission, not reinfection. You can catch Covid-19 more than once though so natural infection doesn't prevent re-infection.

Whether natural infection gives better protection than vaccines or the other way round seems to be unclear with various studies giving different results.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-do-vaccines-protect-better-than-infection-induced-immunity#The-need-for-further-research

As I understand it, you can catch Covid-19 a-symptomatically or mildly symptomatically and will make specific antibodies that are gone after 8 weeks, but you won't develop memory cells. This could explain many of the re-infections in your link, if the previous infections were mild.

More severe and drawn out infection will tend to result in memory cells being developed. These are permanent and can quickly make specific antibodies upon re-exposure. They may prevent re-infection or, if not, reduce disease severity.

The other factor not considered in the study is that vaccination and boosters put a wall of antibodies in front of the virus but these antibodies do not always prevent infection, they only reduce disease severity. This carries Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which then increases the risk of infection for both groups. So, one cannot claim that the vaccines are better.

The thing about respiratory viruses is that because they mutate, the short-lived adaptive response is ideal - it assists the innate immune system deal with the current strain of virus and then is gone. Antibodies produced by long-term memory cells may not be able to neutralize future strains. So if the virus increases its infectiousness as a result of selection pressure from vaccines, higher numbers of people will be infected. This makes the viral load increase and peoples' innate immune system can't cope, so they become more severely ill. Then they tweak the vaccines and the process repeats itself.

[Nearly Sane]

Raving loons

https://inews.co.uk/news/man-arrested-covid-deniers-storm-liverpool-hospital-genocide-1375082

[Maeght]

As I understand it, you can catch Covid-19 a-symptomatically or mildly symptomatically and will make specific antibodies that are gone after 8 weeks, but you won't develop memory cells. This could explain many of the re-infections in your link, if the previous infections were mild.

More severe and drawn out infection will tend to result in memory cells being developed. These are permanent and can quickly make specific antibodies upon re-exposure. They may prevent re-infection or, if not, reduce disease severity.

The other factor not considered in the study is that vaccination and boosters put a wall of antibodies in front of the virus but these antibodies do not always prevent infection, they only reduce disease severity. This carries Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which then increases the risk of infection for both groups. So, one cannot claim that the vaccines are better.

The thing about respiratory viruses is that because they mutate, the short-lived adaptive response is ideal - it assists the innate immune system deal with the current strain of virus and then is gone. Antibodies produced by long-term memory cells may not be able to neutralize future strains. So if the virus increases its infectiousness as a result of selection pressure from vaccines, higher numbers of people will be infected. This makes the viral load increase and peoples' innate immune system can't cope, so they become more severely ill. Then they tweak the vaccines and the process repeats itself.

You haven't supplied any supporting evidence for your statement that 'Naturally acquired immunity prevents re-infection' just speculated about it being due to mild infections dealt with by the innate immune system. If you could find that that would be interesting, otherwise it's just speculation.

I am interested to hear alternative views on this but do wonder why the vast majority of experts in the relevant fields see mass vaccination as the way out of this.

Edit: I have found this article which is fascinating but much is above my head as i am no expert.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742100218X

Edit 2: Also found this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v1 and this article https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants which say that vaccines reduce the tendency for mutations by blocking some of the intermediary steps needed to generate a new variant -  'Unvaccinated patients exhibit more antigenic mutational variance'.

[Spud]

You haven't supplied any supporting evidence for your statement that 'Naturally acquired immunity prevents re-infection'

How about the link in 4860, which states, "The efficacy of natural infection against reinfection, which was derived by comparing the incidence rate in both cohorts, was estimated at 92.3% (95% CI, 90.3 to 93.8 ) for the beta variant and at 97.6% (95% CI, 95.7 to 98.7) for the alpha variant.
...
Protection by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection against reinfection with the beta variant was observed, even 1 year after the primary infection, but protection was slightly lower than that against the alpha variant and wild-type virus circulating in Qatar."

just speculated about it

some of it

being due to mild infections dealt with by the innate immune system. If you could find that that would be interesting, otherwise it's just speculation.

I am interested to hear alternative views on this but do wonder why the vast majority of experts in the relevant fields see mass vaccination as the way out of this.

I also wonder this (!)

Edit: I have found this article which is fascinating but much is above my head as i am no expert.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742100218X

Edit 2: Also found this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v1 and this article https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants which say that vaccines reduce the tendency for mutations by blocking some of the intermediary steps needed to generate a new variant -  'Unvaccinated patients exhibit more antigenic mutational variance'.

Thanks - had a look at these, including some comments in the comments section. Will get back to you on this.

[Spud]

Edit 2: Also found this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v1 and this article https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants which say that vaccines reduce the tendency for mutations by blocking some of the intermediary steps needed to generate a new variant -  'Unvaccinated patients exhibit more antigenic mutational variance'.

The article talks about how if we wanted to induce resistance in a virus to a drug, we could do it by repeatedly exposing it to an insufficient amount of the drug. Over the generations, only the strains of virus that can overcome the reduced amount of drug will survive and ultimately one will arise that is fully resistant.

But the author doesn't seem to appreciate that this is what mass vaccination during a pandemic does. While the antibodies are building up in vaccinated individuals, that is when the selection is occurring, due to the fact that those individuals are already being exposed to the virus. There is no question that the vaccines prevent infection once they have fully primed the immune system - I know I stated a few posts ago that they do not, so just to clarify, that means during the few weeks after vaccination, as well as when waning.

I'm also not claiming that the variants of concern arose because of vaccination. They arose as a result of short-lived antibody build-up (following natural infection) that does not eliminate the virus but does suppress innate immunity, thereby allowing infection and facilitating natural selection of fitter strains due to the partial resistance of those short-lived spike-specific antibodies.

GVB describes how a natural pandemic ruins its course in his video on YouTube, "Asymptomatic Infection results in more infectious Covid-19 strains". (from about 6 -24 minutes).
What he doesn't do is finish explaining how the third wave ends. But that wave is due to the virus becoming more infectious as a result of the above process.

His claim is that if we mass vaccinate on top of the natural tendency for immune pressure to select for fitter variants, we put more and more suboptimal antibodies into the population and thus allow the fitter strains to become dominant, and so the pandemic is prolonged.

[Maeght]

The article talks about how if we wanted to induce resistance in a virus to a drug, we could do it by repeatedly exposing it to an insufficient amount of the drug. Over the generations, only the strains of virus that can overcome the reduced amount of drug will survive and ultimately one will arise that is fully resistant.

But the author doesn't seem to appreciate that this is what mass vaccination during a pandemic does. While the antibodies are building up in vaccinated individuals, that is when the selection is occurring, due to the fact that those individuals are already being exposed to the virus. There is no question that the vaccines prevent infection once they have fully primed the immune system - I know I stated a few posts ago that they do not, so just to clarify, that means during the few weeks after vaccination, as well as when waning.

I'm also not claiming that the variants of concern arose because of vaccination. They arose as a result of short-lived antibody build-up (following natural infection) that does not eliminate the virus but does suppress innate immunity, thereby allowing infection and facilitating natural selection of fitter strains due to the partial resistance of those short-lived spike-specific antibodies.

GVB describes how a natural pandemic ruins its course in his video on YouTube, "Asymptomatic Infection results in more infectious Covid-19 strains". (from about 6 -24 minutes).
What he doesn't do is finish explaining how the third wave ends. But that wave is due to the virus becoming more infectious as a result of the above process.

His claim is that if we mass vaccinate on top of the natural tendency for immune pressure to select for fitter variants, we put more and more suboptimal antibodies into the population and thus allow the fitter strains to become dominant, and so the pandemic is prolonged.

Why do you think the majority of experts around the world support the mass vaccination programs?

[Spud]

Edit 2: Also found this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v1 and this article https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants which say that vaccines reduce the tendency for mutations by blocking some of the intermediary steps needed to generate a new variant -  'Unvaccinated patients exhibit more antigenic mutational variance'.

Hi again,
The study says that "Analysing the relationship between vaccination rates and lineage entropy, we found that the declining diversity of SARS-CoV-2 lineages is indeed negatively correlated with increased rate of mass vaccination across the countries analyzed...Furthermore, the decline in the lineage diversity is coupled with the increased dominance of Variants of Concern: the B.1.1.7/Alpha-variant (45%), B.1.1.617/Delta-variant (21%), P.1/Gamma-variant (10%)12 [as at May 2021], suggesting that these variants may be “fitter strains’’ of SARS-CoV-2." So let's suppose that no vaccination had taken place. Could we not infer (if this study is implying that reduced diversity resulted from mass vaccination) that the previously higher level of lineage diversity would have been maintained, and thus that more infectious variants would not have become dominant (at least, not so rapidly)? In that case, the vaccines literally acted as a breeding ground for those variants. Or maybe I haven't interpreted this correctly?

[Maeght]

Hi again,
The study says that "Analysing the relationship between vaccination rates and lineage entropy, we found that the declining diversity of SARS-CoV-2 lineages is indeed negatively correlated with increased rate of mass vaccination across the countries analyzed...Furthermore, the decline in the lineage diversity is coupled with the increased dominance of Variants of Concern: the B.1.1.7/Alpha-variant (45%), B.1.1.617/Delta-variant (21%), P.1/Gamma-variant (10%)12 [as at May 2021], suggesting that these variants may be “fitter strains’’ of SARS-CoV-2." So let's suppose that no vaccination had taken place. Could we not infer (if this study is implying that reduced diversity resulted from mass vaccination) that the previously higher level of lineage diversity would have been maintained, and thus that more infectious variants would not have become dominant (at least, not so rapidly)? In that case, the vaccines literally acted as a breeding ground for those variants. Or maybe I haven't interpreted this correctly?

I would think, since the paper is entitled 'COVID-19 vaccines dampen genomic diversity of SARS-CoV-2: Unvaccinated patients exhibit more antigenic mutational variance' then no. But I'm no expert.

Why do you think the majority of experts around the world support the mass vaccination programs?

[Udayana]

I hope you don't mind if I have a go at this.

Feel free
 

True, but what does support it is that we already know that the vaccines allow transmission. The natural adaptive immune response mounts after viral load and transmission peaks, so there is little opportunity for it to put selection pressure on the virus.

This doesn't follow. Once the initial infection has passed, how much difference is there between natural and vaccine induced immunity?

Because vaccinal antibodies allow transmission, they will be likely to put selection pressure on the virus, and so will indirectly cause increased infection due to the increased spread of more highly infectious variants.

"Natural" antibodies allow reinfection and transmission to a similar extent, and so the same (incorrect) argument would apply.

This is not to say that natural immunity doesn't apply selection pressure too: we know that the variants of concern were circulating before mass vaccination began. If a more infectious variant arises naturally within a mostly un-vaccinated population, its spread will be limited because their innate immunity, which can deal with a low viral load, along with a build-up in transmission-preventing, naturally acquired immunity, will eventually dilute the cases of infection with this variant enough to result in herd immunity. We see this currently happening in Bulgaria, for example.

Bulgaria? What evidence is there to support that spread of a more infectious variant has been limited due to innate immunity? They have higher death rates, do they have herd immunity?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

In the UK Health Security Agency's vaccine surveillance report we are seeing lower case rates in unvaccinated people aged 18-69. I suggest that this cancels out/makes up for the higher death rates in the same groups.

You have ignored all the warnings on interpretation given in the document. See also:

https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/communicating-data-is-more-than-just-presenting-the-numbers/

[Anchorman]

 If those of us here wo claim to be Christian, givin His command to love other, are in any way trying to do so, then the Christ-like thing woyld be the selfless act of accepting all vaccines in the hope that we lessen the risk to others.

[Sebastian Toe]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59867046

[Spud]

This doesn't follow. Once the initial infection has passed, how much difference is there between natural and vaccine induced immunity?

As suggested in a previous link, the immune system won't put much selection pressure on the virus during the initial infection. But vaccination while the virus is circulating will force the virus to evolve. This was confirmed by Sir Patrick Vallance in January 2021 during a press conference. So notwithstanding the efficacy of the vaccines, it seems to me that mass vaccination will still lead to an increase in the infection rate.

[Spud]

If those of us here wo claim to be Christian, givin His command to love other, are in any way trying to do so, then the Christ-like thing woyld be the selfless act of accepting all vaccines in the hope that we lessen the risk to others.

But to paraphrase the leading headline in yesterday's Telegraph, "We can't jab the whole planet every six months. Future vaccination will have to be limited to those who are most vulnerable"